Adi Meyerson: I Want To Sing My Heart Out In Praise of Life
Adi Meyerson

After making an auspicious debut with her 2018 release Where We Stand, Adi Meyerson takes a significant artistic leap forward on her follow-up. Original, ambitious, imaginative, adventurous—I Want To Sing My Heart Out in Praise of Life is all that and more. Rather than play it safe with a mix of originals and covers, the NYC-based jazz bassist has crafted a mature personal statement that's both conceptually bold and musically engrossing. Configured as a six-part suite, each track differs from the next, with some incorporating spoken word or vocals and others purely instrumental, yet each also feels connected to the others because of the shared theme.

The idea for the project took root the year before Where We Stand appeared when she attended an exhibit featuring the work of visual artist Yayoi Kusama. Struck by her conviction that art can provide a utopian place for people to spiritually and mentally inhabit, Meyerson decided to fashion a musical counterpart, one that would invite listeners into an expansive, thought-provoking, and safe space that would enable them to reflect on their own experiences and identities. For the project, Meyerson enlisted the services of trumpeter Marquis Hill, flutist Anne Drummond, keyboardist Sam Towse, drummer Kush Abadey, and Lucas Pino on bass clarinet and tenor saxophone, with vocals handled by spoken word artist Eden Girma and singers Sabeth Perez and Camille Thurman. Musically, there are moments where the material recalls the vibrant soundworlds of Miles's In A Silent Way and Herbie Hancock's Mwandishi, but there's nothing retrograde about the project. With Meyerson at the helm, the music is consistently fresh and vital.

The album's trippy headspace crystallizes in the peaceful opener “Prelude” when Girma intones heady phrases (“Paradise remains the ultimate home of our creation … May we enter the space that lies above together … ”) in a mantra-like delivery against a slowly intensifying backdrop of bowed tones, wordless vocal murmurings, swirling woodwinds, and muted horns. The boldness of Meyerson's vision is forcefully conveyed in the second track, “Kabocha”, the word referring to a type of Japanese pumpkin and derived from a recording of Kusama reciting her poem “On Pumpkins.” The title repeats throughout to hypnotic effect, but as captivating are the punchy groove Meyerson and Abadey use to animate the material, especially the entrancing ostinato figure with which the bassist grounds the performance. The funky track also gives Pino on bass clarinet and Drummond extended solo moments, which they capitalize on with dynamic statements.

Up next, “Follow the Red Dot” is distinguished by an imaginative structural approach in the way the instruments' initial statements at first seem unrelated but then gradually cohere into a unified design. In bringing flurries of trumpet, flute, and bass clarinet into tight formation, the music's trajectory replicates, in Meyerson's words, the “simultaneous feeling of chaos and perfect organization I felt when standing in Kusama's Red and White Polka Dot Room.” With Hill soloing and the rhythm section elastically responding to his forward charge, the playing echoes the elasticity shown by Miles' quintet with Tony Williams, especially when Towse takes a rather Herbie-like acoustic piano solo that arrests the driving rhythm before it reinstates itself at the end.

The title of “Caged Bird” naturally calls Maya Angelou to mind, but it's also a tribute by Meyerson to another literary figure, Angela Davis. More importantly, the track gives Thurman fabulous material to sing and scat over when the band's Latin-tinged pulse swings deliciously alongside her. Though the leader generally inhabits the background, content to stabilize the album with assured bass playing, she introduces the eleven-minute “Infinity” with a terrific unaccompanied solo to get the journey underway. And a scenic journey it is too, marked as its is by atmospheric wordless vocals from Perez and a compelling, rather Tyner-esque solo by Towse. At album's end, Thurman returns to bolster the poignancy of the ballad-styled title track, her soulful performance elegantly supported by the pianist only.

As stated, I Want To Sing My Heart Out In Praise of Life represents a major advance for Meyerson and sets the bar high for whatever's to come. In creating such an original and imaginative set, she demonstrates boldness of vision and shows herself to be an artist of authenticity and integrity. The way she builds on the classic tradition of her forebears to craft something that feels fresh and new is exciting.

August 2021